Decades ago, Wilson had taken up cudgels to promote kin selection as a powerful explanation of “eusociality”—this is the term used to describe social insects and other animals that engage in the cooperative care of their young.

Fear, lies, abject racism, and xenophobia are nothing new to our political history, but the difference today seems to be that those inhuman cudgels are not being deployed in the service of a political cause: they are the cause themselves.